How to get Visa to russia from Germany in 2020

The appearance of a tourist invitations is not fixed, for this reason each company with right to issue, prints them on their letterhead. The invitation consists of two parts:

1. Tourist voucher indicating that you have bought a tourist ticket to Russia.
2. Confirmation of tourist admission — the Consulate is requested to issue a visa to a foreign citizen.

Each of these documents contains the following information: reference number (confirming that tour operator, issued the invitation, is registered in the Unified Federal Register of Tour Operators), the name of the tour operator, passport details of a German citizen, a list of cities he intends to visit in Russia, hotels in which he will stop, the planned dates of entry and exit and the number of visas required to complete the trip. To issue this invitation with the help of any tour operator will take no more than 1 day.

An invitation letter from the organization is a petition to the consulate to issue a business visa to a specific German businessman. Only organizations with accreditation from the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation are entitled to issue those invitations. It takes no more than 5 minutes to complete this invitation online.

I recommend to issue business invitations to Russia for German citizens in the letter form:

• it will cost much cheaper than invitation on the form of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or in the form of telex;
• processing of it will take quite a bit of time;
• the original of such an invitation is not required when it’s time to apply for a visa at the consulate (your guest will be able to print and submit an invitation letter sent to his email), so you will save money without paying for international mail services;
• if there are 2 previous business visas to Russia, a foreigner can even get a visa with a validity of 5 years on the basis of this letter.

An invitation on the form of the Ministry of Internal Affairs can be received for a foreign entrepreneur after filing a relevant application and checking for the presence of a German citizen with unpaid fines for violating the visa regime on his previous visits to Russia. It can take from 7 to 21 business days to draw up an invitation in this way.

An invitation by Telex is an instruction transmitted through a special communication channel from the Russian Foreign Ministry to issue a business visa to a foreigner. It is convenient in that you will need to tell your foreign guest only the invitation number and information about the inviting organization. Registration takes from 7 to 21 business days. The benefit of this kind of invitations is that they do not require the original to be mailed.

Receive an invitation

Employers will need to prepare documents for their foreign workers that will allow them to obtain work visas. Also, they need to carefully monitor their employees do not violate the visa regime and timely register at migration services. Otherwise, a large fine is imposed on the employer.

If all the necessary documents are available, a work visa is issued to a German citizen for a period of 90 days, but after entering Russia he can extend it for up to 1 year or 3 years. Then, every year before the visa expires, it can be extended for another year. This is very convenient, because if you have a work visa, you can stay on the territory of Russia throughout the entire term of its validity (and not just 90 days out of every 180) or leave and enter as much as you need (since the work visa is multiple). But there is a drawback: if a foreigner finds another employer who offers him more favorable conditions for cooperation, he will need to leave Russia and apply for a new work visa, having received the necessary documents from his new employer.

Germans who want to stay in Russia for a short period of time can do it with electronic visa. This is a type of visa document with which German citizens can come to the Russian Federation and stay in Russia from 1 to 8 days.

This visa format has been introduced as an experiment that lasts until now. For getting an electronic visa, German citizens don’t need an invitation, just a digital photo and a completed application form on the Foreign Ministry website. With an electronic visa, a German can only visit the Kaliningrad Region (St. Petersburg will also be included in this list from October 1, 2019).